Off on a Comet: Part One

Chapter XXII

A Frozen Ocean

The moon! She had disappeared for weeks; was she now
returning? Had she been faithless to the earth? and had she now
approached to be a satellite of the new-born world?

“Impossible!” said Lieutenant Procope; “the earth is millions and
millions of leagues away, and it is not probable that the moon has ceased
to revolve about her.”

“Why not?” remonstrated Servadac. “It would not be more strange than the
other phenomena which we have lately witnessed. Why should not the moon
have fallen within the limits of Gallia’s attraction, and become her
satellite?”

“Upon that supposition,” put in the count, “I should think that it would
be altogether unlikely that three months would elapse without our seeing
her.”

“Quite incredible!” continued Procope. “And there is another thing which
totally disproves the captain’s hypothesis; the magnitude of Gallia is
far too insignificant for her power of attraction to carry off the moon.”

“But,” persisted Servadac, “why should not the same convulsion that tore
us away from the earth have torn away the moon as well? After wandering
about as she would for a while in the solar regions, I do not see why she
should not have attached herself to us.”

The lieutenant repeated his conviction that it was not likely.

“But why not?” again asked Servadac impetuously.

“Because, I tell you, the mass of Gallia is so inferior to that of the
moon, that Gallia would become the moon’s satellite; the moon could not
possibly become hers.”

“Assuming, however,” continued Servadac, “such to be the case—”

“I am afraid,” said the lieutenant, interrupting him, “that I cannot
assume anything of the sort even for a moment.”

Servadac smiled good-humoredly.

“I confess you seem to have the best of the argument, and if Gallia had
become a satellite of the moon, it would not have taken three months to
catch sight of her. I suppose you are right.”

While this discussion had been going on, the satellite, or whatever it
might be, had been rising steadily above the horizon, and had reached a
position favorable for observation. Telescopes were brought, and it was
very soon ascertained, beyond a question, that the new luminary was not
the well-known Phoebe of terrestrial nights; it had no feature in common
with the moon. Although it was apparently much nearer to Gallia than the
moon to the earth, its superficies was hardly one-tenth as large, and so
feebly did it reflect the light of the remote sun, that it scarcely
emitted radiance enough to extinguish the dim luster of stars of the
eighth magnitude. Like the sun, it had risen in the west, and was now at
its full. To mistake its identity with the moon was absolutely
impossible; not even Servadac could discover a trace of the seas, chasms,
craters, and mountains which have been so minutely delineated in lunar
charts, and it could not be denied that any transient hope that had been
excited as to their once again being about to enjoy the peaceful smiles
of “the queen of night” must all be resigned.

Count Timascheff finally suggested, though somewhat doubtfully, the
question of the probability that Gallia, in her course across the zone of
the minor planets, had carried off one of them; but whether it was one of
the 169 asteroids already included in the astronomical catalogues, or one
previously unknown, he did not presume to determine. The idea to a
certain extent was plausible, inasmuch as it has been ascertained that
several of the telescopic planets are of such small dimensions that a
good walker might make a circuit of them in four and twenty hours;
consequently Gallia, being of superior volume, might be supposed capable
of exercising a power of attraction upon any of these miniature
microcosms.

The first night in Nina’s Hive passed without special incident; and next
morning a regular scheme of life was definitely laid down. “My lord
governor,” as Ben Zoof until he was peremptorily forbidden delighted to
call Servadac, had a wholesome dread of idleness and its consequences,
and insisted upon each member of the party undertaking some special duty
to fulfill. There was plenty to do. The domestic animals required a great
deal of attention; a supply of food had to be secured and preserved;
fishing had to be carried on while the condition of the sea would allow
it; and in several places the galleries had to be further excavated to
render them more available for use. Occupation, then, need never be
wanting, and the daily round of labor could go on in orderly routine.

A perfect concord ruled the little colony. The Russians and Spaniards
amalgamated well, and both did their best to pick up various scraps of
French, which was considered the official language of the place. Servadac
himself undertook the tuition of Pablo and Nina, Ben Zoof being their
companion in play-hours, when he entertained them with enchanting stories
in the best Parisian French, about “a lovely city at the foot of a
mountain,” where he always promised one day to take them.

The end of March came, but the cold was not intense to such a degree as
to confine any of the party to the interior of their resort; several
excursions were made along the shore, and for a radius of three or four
miles the adjacent district was carefully explored. Investigation,
however, always ended in the same result; turn their course in whatever
direction they would, they found that the country retained everywhere its
desert character, rocky, barren, and without a trace of vegetation. Here
and there a slight layer of snow, or a thin coating of ice arising from
atmospheric condensation indicated the existence of superficial moisture,
but it would require a period indefinitely long, exceeding human
reckoning, before that moisture could collect into a stream and roll
downwards over the stony strata to the sea. It seemed at present out of
their power to determine whether the land upon which they were so happily
settled was an island or a continent, and till the cold was abated they
feared to undertake any lengthened expedition to ascertain the actual
extent of the strange concrete of metallic crystallization.

By ascending one day to the summit of the volcano, Captain Servadac and
the count succeeded in getting a general idea of the aspect of the
country. The mountain itself was an enormous block rising symmetrically
to a height of nearly 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, in the form
of a truncated cone, of which the topmost section was crowned by a wreath
of smoke issuing continuously from the mouth of a narrow crater.

Under the old condition of terrestrial things, the ascent of this steep
acclivity would have been attended with much fatigue, but as the effect
of the altered condition of the law of gravity, the travelers performed
perpetual prodigies in the way of agility, and in little over an hour
reached the edge of the crater, without more sense of exertion than if
they had traversed a couple of miles on level ground. Gallia had its
drawbacks, but it had some compensating advantages.

Telescopes in hand, the explorers from the summit scanned the surrounding
view. Their anticipations had already realized what they saw. Just as
they expected, on the north, east, and west lay the Gallian Sea, smooth
and motionless as a sheet of glass, the cold having, as it were,
congealed the atmosphere so that there was not a breath of wind. Towards
the south there seemed no limit to the land, and the volcano formed the
apex of a triangle, of which the base was beyond the reach of vision.
Viewed even from this height, whence distance would do much to soften the
general asperity, the surface nevertheless seemed to be bristling with
its myriads of hexagonal lamellae, and to present difficulties which, to
an ordinary pedestrian, would be insurmountable.

“Oh for some wings, or else a balloon!” cried Servadac, as he gazed
around him; and then, looking down to the rock upon which they were
standing, he added, “We seem to have been transplanted to a soil strange
enough in its chemical character to bewilder the savants at a
museum.”

“And do you observe, captain,” asked the count, “how the convexity of our
little world curtails our view? See, how circumscribed is the horizon!”

Servadac replied that he had noticed the same circumstance from the top
of the cliffs of Gourbi Island.

“Yes,” said the count; “it becomes more and more obvious that ours is a
very tiny world, and that Gourbi Island is the sole productive spot upon
its surface. We have had a short summer, and who knows whether we are not
entering upon a winter that may last for years, perhaps for centuries?”

“But we must not mind, count,” said Servadac, smiling. “We have agreed,
you know, that, come what may, we are to be philosophers.”

“Ay, true, my friend,” rejoined the count; “we must be philosophers and
something more; we must be grateful to the good Protector who has
hitherto befriended us, and we must trust His mercy to the end.”

For a few moments they both stood in silence, and contemplated land and
sea; then, having given a last glance over the dreary panorama, they
prepared to wend their way down the mountain. Before, however, they
commenced their descent, they resolved to make a closer examination of
the crater. They were particularly struck by what seemed to them almost
the mysterious calmness with which the eruption was effected. There was
none of the wild disorder and deafening tumult that usually accompany the
discharge of volcanic matter, but the heated lava, rising with a uniform
gentleness, quietly overran the limits of the crater, like the flow of
water from the bosom of a peaceful lake. Instead of a boiler exposed to
the action of an angry fire, the crater rather resembled a brimming
basin, of which the contents were noiselessly escaping. Nor were there
any igneous stones or red-hot cinders mingled with the smoke that crowned
the summit; a circumstance that quite accorded with the absence of the
pumice-stones, obsidians, and other minerals of volcanic origin with
which the base of a burning mountain is generally strewn.

Captain Servadac was of opinion that this peculiarity augured favorably
for the continuance of the eruption. Extreme violence in physical, as
well as in moral nature, is never of long duration. The most terrible
storms, like the most violent fits of passion, are not lasting; but here
the calm flow of the liquid fire appeared to be supplied from a source
that was inexhaustible, in the same way as the waters of Niagara, gliding
on steadily to their final plunge, would defy all effort to arrest their
course.

Before the evening of this day closed in, a most important change was
effected in the condition of the Gallian Sea by the intervention of human
agency. Notwithstanding the increasing cold, the sea, unruffled as it was
by a breath of wind, still retained its liquid state. It is an
established fact that water, under this condition of absolute stillness,
will remain uncongealed at a temperature several degrees below zero,
whilst experiment, at the same time, shows that a very slight shock will
often be sufficient to convert it into solid ice. It had occurred to
Servadac that if some communication could be opened with Gourbi Island,
there would be a fine scope for hunting expeditions. Having this ultimate
object in view, he assembled his little colony upon a projecting rock at
the extremity of the promontory, and having called Nina and Pablo out to
him in front, he said: “Now, Nina, do you think you could throw something
into the sea?”

“I think I could,” replied the child, “but I am sure that Pablo would
throw it a great deal further than I can.”

“Never mind, you shall try first.”

Putting a fragment of ice into Nina’s hand, he addressed himself to
Pablo:

“Look out, Pablo; you shall see what a nice little fairy Nina is! Throw,
Nina, throw, as hard as you can.”

Nina balanced the piece of ice two or three times in her hand, and threw
it forward with all her strength.

A sudden thrill seemed to vibrate across the motionless waters to the
distant horizon, and the Gallian Sea had become a solid sheet of ice!